I've got some mint flavored green tea that I thought would make an interesting metheglin. Has anyone done this? I'm wondering how much I should use to yield a noticeable taste without it being overpowering. I don't have a recipe yet, but I'm thinking a pretty standard 5 gallon batch..15-18 pounds of honey, spring water to full, yeast energizer/nutrient, and some volume of brewed tea. Any input guys?

01-05-2010, 01:32 PM

AToE

You should be able to find a fair bit through the search function, there have been a couple big threads about this recently.

I will add though that I have a 6 gal batch of green tea mead aging right now, and I can offer some advice:

Do not heat the tea. I steeped the bags in boiling water, and the results are very bitter. I thought I had a good recipe for "drink young" mead, but because I heated the tea it's going to have to age for quite a while, and may never cease to be bitter.

Cold steeping will prevent that bitterness from occuring. I would just put the tea bags directly into the primary fermentation, or if you want to keep an eye on the taste more, steep them in the secondary so you can take taste tests.

Can't say for sure how many bags, because mint is a strong flavour and I don't know what your tea is like, but if you want to be cautious I would start with 4 or 5 cold steeping in your must/mead for a week, see how that tastes and go from there.

01-05-2010, 01:43 PM

TXBeowulf

FYI, boiling any aerial plant parts is a surefire way of extracting any bitter compounds in the plant, which is the reason that hops are boiled in beer. Hot steeping cuts down on bitterness because not as many bitter compounds are released. Cold steeping virtually eliminates bitterness, but extends the time needed to extract flavors a lot.

Because they tend to be woodier, roots almost always have to be boiled to extract anything from them.

An alternative is to make a tincture using a little neutral grain spirits such as a good quality tasteless vodka. Pour the vodka over the fresh bruised or dried plant material, cap, and leave in a cool dark place. Shake it every day. After a week, strain off the tincture and check the strength. If it is strong enough, cap it until ready to use. If not, pour it over more (unused) herb and return to storage, shaking every day. Repeat until the tincture is as strong as you like it.

A tincture should probably be added to secondary, and should be used very carefully, as the flavors can get very concentrated.

Edit:

Since alcohol is so good at getting flavors out of plant matter, you might try just putting the stuff in a hopping bag and dunking it in the secondary. The biggest problem I can see with this is that the risk of contamination is higher...

01-08-2010, 04:36 PM

jaxn slim

I love the idea of a tincture with vodka. They mentioned that in The Compleat Meadmaker IIRC.

I have been using vodka to sanitize various peppers that I add to beers and meads, but I haven't yet added the actual vodka. I've just been making shots with it. :o